The backwoods of Worcestershire
is no place from which to start building a poetic career. A poetic world,
certainly: but poetic career: certainly not. So it is interesting to
note that Worcestershire-born Martin Corless-Smith lives and works in
Boise, Idaho, and this book is published in New York. It’s an
interesting path.

But what is a poetic career anyway? This is one of the things that
seem to be an issue in Swallows. The author obsesses about Horace
and John Keats - and in the course of the book calls on a group of
generally establishment poets to investigate his interest in place,
identity, and language in a way that before reading I imagined I’d
grown tired of a long time ago.

There’s a quote from Ron Silliman on the inside back of the
book. It’s a good one: He says “Clearly this is a major
poetry as well as a problematic one – very possibly the former
condition is itself what demands the latter”, and although John
Donne tellingly gets the back cover to himself, what Ron Silliman
(in the waistcoat of Harold Bloom) suggests is (to my mind) certainly
half true. Ignoring the stuff about ‘Major Poetry’ (is
Major Poetry in the same army as Captain America ?) you are still
left with the word ‘problematic’. I haven’t seen
the larger text but what seems problematic are the historical &
romantic sources that constitute the itch of the book. How can this
be relevant? How do we need it? Where is the poet in relation to his
earlier poets?

The answer is that if you are good enough, you can do whatever you
want. The focus & passion of the poet’s eye makes them all
relevant, whether you like it or not. The swallows of the title are
birds, but I think that the energy of the word as a verb is also a
useful way in to all this. His passion for & engagement with these
writers’ struggles & erased & embellished identities
stands as a metaphor for his own. [It’s a minor aside, but I
imagine being British in Boise acted as some kind of magnet for all
this Europe as well.] The gravity that Keats, Milton & Horace
offer is both dangerous & attractive. It’s hard to imagine
anything original coming out of such faithful investigation: and yet
it does.

There are very few writers getting anything useful out of the Norton
Anthology these days. For every poet who knows their O’Hara
and Ashbery, how many these days know their Horace & Keats? —&
why should they? The poems here suggest there is some juice in these
ancient grapes yet. Susan Howe has made something interesting out
of the literary past. Czeslaw Milosz made a career out of talking
with his elders. Ezra? Of course. It is a very small list.
But – with Swallows, at least - you can add the name of Martin
Corless-Smith.